West Branch Falls to Columbus in Ten Innings in Regional Opener
Ryan Murken
Your Prep Sports
WEST BRANCH – The postseason was short for West Branch which fell to Columbus 8-4 in its regional opener on Monday.
An opening-round postseason loss didn’t stop the entire season from being a success for the youthful Bears.
Columbus scored four runs in the top of the 10th inning to escape with an 8-4 victory over West Branch in a Class 2A, Region 8 opener on Monday in West Branch.
The loss ended a season of great growth for West Branch (10-21) which improved its win total for the second consecutive season while matching its win total from the previous two seasons combined.
“I am extremely happy, a successful season? 100 percent yes because of the way they improved,” West Branch coach Eric Stenberg said. “Each and every girl improved and you can’t fault them for that. We didn’t go backwards we went forward. We’ve gone forward every year and the future is bright.”
While West Branch had its season end on Monday Columbus (8-21) avenged a 13-12 loss to the Bears last month and advanced to the Region 8 quarterfinals where it will face No. 11 Louisa-Muscatine (29-4) on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in Letts.
Columbus had four of its 11 hits in the four-run 10th inning highlighted by two-run singles by Aracely Garza and Jessica Del Rio that snapped a 4-4 tie.
“I am proud of the girls they battled,” Stenberg said. “They are a young team and they played their hearts out and that’s all you can ask.”
Columbus scored twice in the first inning and added two more runs in the third to take a 4-1 lead before West Branch rallied.
The Bears got a run back in the fourth when freshman pitcher Emalyn Poe tripled down the right field line and scored on a throwing error.
West Branch then pulled even with two runs in the fifth on an RBI single by Lander Malloy and a RBI groundout by Poe.
“I just told them to trust themselves,” Stenberg said. “They’ve been hitting the ball well the last half of the season and we knew we were going to score some more runs we just had to buckle down defensively and not hurt ourselves.”
After allowing four runs in the first three innings Poe settled in and tossed six consecutive scoreless innings allowing just four singles in that span.
The freshman right-hander struck out seven, walked one and hit two batters in the 10-inning complete game.
“I’m proud of her, she did great and she is just going to keep getting better and better,” Stenberg said of Poe. “She doesn’t really understand how good she could be if she really works at it so the offseason will be big for her.”
The teams stayed scoreless until the 10th when Garza and Jessica Del Rio each came up with two-run singles to center field that gave the Wildcats a four-run lead.
West Branch had a pair of baserunners in the bottom of the inning on singles by senior Alyse Klinkkammer and Poe but Columbus junior Lily Coil worked out of the jam to preserve the win.
“We’ve been playing from behind most of the year and it’s not how we want to do it but we don’t hang our heads we just keep battling,” Stenberg said. “We got it back to a tie ball game and we had our chances we just couldn’t push a run in and had a couple of bad breaks and a couple of balls get down that we didn’t want to get down.”
Malloy, Klinkkammer and Poe all had two hits for West Branch and Sulli Bucknell and Kendra Rarick each had a hit.
West Branch started five eighth-graders and a freshman on Monday and had just one senior, Klinkkammer, on its roster this season.
“We came into the season missing a lot of key pieces from last year, a lot of kids that weren’t on our roster that we expected to be and so we had two choices, hang our head and think about what could have been or play with the girls we’ve got and play our hearts out,” Stenberg said. “They chose to play and get better and they got so much better.”
Columbus 202 000 000 4 – 8 11 3
West Branch 100 120 000 0 – 4 8 3
W – Lily Coil L – Emalyn Poe
3B – COL: Lily Coil. WB: Emalyn Poe
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